Reader-Response Criticism

Reader-response criticism holds that the meaning of a literary work is realized through the reader's active engagement, not contained wholly in the text.

Definition

An approach that locates literary meaning in the reader's response to and processing of the text, analyzing reading as an active, temporally unfolding construction of meaning.

Scope

This topic covers the mainly Anglo-American strand of reader-oriented theory: Rosenblatt's transactional theory, Iser's phenomenological model of the implied reader and textual gaps, Fish's 'affective stylistics' and later theory of interpretive communities, and the psychological models of Holland and Bleich. It treats the spectrum from text-controlled to reader-controlled accounts and the consequences for the objectivity of interpretation.

Core questions

• How much of a work's meaning is supplied by the text and how much by the reader?
• How does meaning emerge through the temporal experience of reading?
• Who is the 'reader': an ideal construct, a historical audience, or an individual?
• If meaning depends on response, what makes one reading better than another?

Key theories

The transactional theory

Rosenblatt's view that the literary work is an event arising from a transaction between a particular reader and text, distinguishing 'efferent' from 'aesthetic' modes of reading.

The implied reader and gaps

Iser's claim that texts guide an 'implied reader' through structured indeterminacies and gaps that the reader actively fills, making reading a creative realization of the work.

Affective stylistics and interpretive communities

Fish's early focus on the moment-by-moment effects of language on the reader, later reframed by his argument that interpretive communities, not texts, determine meaning.

History

Rosenblatt anticipated reader-oriented criticism as early as 1938, but the movement flourished in the 1970s as a reaction to New Critical objectivism. Iser's phenomenological model, Fish's affective stylistics, and the psychological approaches of Holland and Bleich were brought together in Tompkins's 1980 anthology, which traced the arc from formalism toward poststructuralism.

Debates

Objectivity versus subjectivity of meaning

Whether grounding meaning in the reader leads to interpretive anarchy, or whether textual structures, conventions, or interpretive communities supply adequate constraints.

Key figures

• Louise Rosenblatt
• Wolfgang Iser
• Stanley Fish
• Norman Holland

Seminal works

• rosenblatt1978
• iser1978
• fish1980

Frequently asked questions

What is the implied reader?

The implied reader, in Iser's theory, is the reader the text presupposes and guides through its structure of gaps and perspectives, as distinct from any actual flesh-and-blood reader.

What are interpretive communities?

Interpretive communities, in Fish's later theory, are groups that share interpretive strategies; because these strategies shape what readers perceive, the community rather than the isolated text or reader is the source of stable meaning.